JOURNAL. 2024
03.04.2023-31.12.2023
I did not use these journals as often as I had hoped, or how I would likely use my journals now (2024). Still, this page will remain here as an archive.
note (31.12.2023)
End of the year. I finished Middlemarch today, of which I had 350 pages remaining. I don't think I have ever read any more in one day, but I quite enjoyed it. Mainly writing this entry as I would like something to close out the year. Beginning next year I intend to have a more frequent journal on here, divided perhaps by month. But I shall not make this entry long, as only twenty minutes remain in this year.
note (26.12.2023)
no proper apology and things go on largely as before. and I am cold and frightened
note (12.11.2023)
Uhhhhhh been a while since I've posted here... I am a little over a month into current philosophy + sociology studies. They are overall going well so far, although I worry about becoming overwhelmed in the next semester when I have to write too many essays. So in the name of getting ahead, I'm trying to get my readings for classes with a yearly syllabus done now, so that they won't take up too much time later. In the name of this, I've been spending my time in the philosophy library, which is actually a fairly relaxing location to focus in. I find so far I am much more efficient than at home, particularly as I do not bring my laptop but use my tablet instead, which is largely dedicated to academic studies. In fact, I may be able to do all my necessary studying (in this semester at least) there during the week, leaving weekends largely free. Such is my case this weekend, during which I was able to, just yesterday, write 4,000 words for a personal project. Of course, this serves as no guarrantee for what will happen in the case of any depressive episodes or other phenomena, but I feel quite happy with this situation so far.
disappearance (17.09.2023)
But which is the worse disappearance? To be completely forgotten, or to be despised, and in this way to haunt on, but only in the negative?
separation ii (16.09.2023)
Of course, to fear "I" because it signifies just as much a "not-I" is because I acknowledge myself as unessential to the world. It is in the end a very narcissistic fear. This ought to be acknowledged—and not out of shame. Yes, it is a narcissism; what of it?
separation (15.09.2023)
The dread of one's own name because to be named is to be something separate from the world. To be forever something other, to other oneself by speech itself. To shudder at "I" because even "I" only exists in opposition to not-I, the impossibility of a first-person monologue. Monologue only possible in true monism, complete oneness with the world, in speaking only of the very things which occur without any acknowledgement of speaking as an "I" of the endless "not-I". Yet this is the dissolution of self.
uhhhhhh (04.09.2023)
anyone know if we have the impossible task of being human due tomorrow
Language learning (19.08.2023)
I now find that I can often read entire news articles in Polish without needing to Learn a single new word in order to understand. This is, of course, a sign that I have progressed quite far in my understanding of the language; indeed, from the exams I have seen, I would seem to be barely or almost at the C1 level. However, this is not yet sufficient for me and I do still very often encounter words or phrasing entirely unknown to me. My learning simply progresses slower, as I more rarely can casually find new things to learn.
note (12.08.2023)
Finish up Tawada Yoko's Fruwająca dusza (Flying Soul) yesterday; it does not seem to have an English translation at this moment. A shame, as it's a quite interesting, strange little book. Should I ever become good enough at Japanese to translate anything, I have have to keep this novel in mind.
note (07.08.2023)
There is something about the emphasis on diagnosis as the determinant of "need" instead of symptoms that is incredibly insidious to me. Something about how "non-productive" variations in being have to be acknowledged only in the bounds of pathologization so that we can maintain the illusion that the proper, healthy human (the prototypical human) is somehow biologically meant to exist as a productive machine...
note (24.07.2023)
I am the only person in the world to be right ever!
note (23.07.2023)
I did get in to the program I wanted! The interview was not too bad, but I'm definitely glad I practiced discussing my topics with a friend beforehand. In fact I got back a pretty good score on the interview, which I think is pretty good given that it was in my second language. I will now officially be studying philosophy through an interdisciplinary program. Although I had a certain luck that the questions did not touch the parts of the text which were most confusing for me, such as *cough* Heidegger, who does not know how to write.
I think I have some kind of cold. Unfortunate. I am very sleepy.
note (14.07.2023)
qualified for the competency interview for the program I want to get into. how well I actually do on the interview, however, is another matter...
note (09.07.2023)
there will never be enough time for me in the world for me to learn everything I wish to learn and that is a true and terrible shame
my head hurts :( (29.06.2023)
delusion hours bc I'm back to feeling that there is some unbridgeable communication gap between myself and most if not all people that leaves our understanding of each other more impossible than most people find between themselves. but I will feel better in the morning probably
Art of Philosophy (29.06.2023)
Art is decidedly Not Real and I think that is what makes it of particular value to philosophy. Words themselves are not real but generally are treated as direct correspondents of reality. Art (verbal or otherwise), however, we (in this era, at any rate), we acknowledge as not a direct correspondent of reality. This allows us to "feel" it in a way we cannot feel sterile linguistic abstractions. It allows us to understaand something in metaphorical and emotional terms while also acknowledging this as something separate from logical-comprehended reality.
Haunted (25.06.2023)
Wrote a poem a bit ago tat was bothering me because of the play on phantasm/fantasy using different letters. Yes they sound the same but I'm writingnot speking so it's different!!!1!!1exclamationmarknumberonenumberone. Considered French and Polish but Polish doesn't quite use self/other and same/other in the same way English does, and French is closer but I don't well it know enough to come up with something that would work the way I used self-same in English. Also I have not used French in a while so I wouldn't trust myself to write something well in it, especially as I have no-one to proofread. So I just borrowed the French words and put them in the English poem even though they're cognates. It works well enough for me.
note (24.06.2023)
Quite sleepy. Shall go to bed soon. Must say I find it interesting looking back on this morning as if it were a different day already. As if when I roused myself from a map in a much better mood I had split the day in two. Strange to think about.
READING JOURNALS (24.06.2023)
Have started keeping reading journals. So far only one (on Jakobson's Verbal Art, Verbal Sign, Verbal Time), but we will see where this goes. May be an interesting way to encourage reflection on what I am reading.
note (24.06.2023)
let's all explode together and then reform through free association
note (24.06.2023)
What I would really like is a month or two in which I can completely isolate myself except perhaps through very slow means such as this site & email and spend it largely dissolving my personality and sense to see what happens and form a new one. I don't say this is a self-destructive way, not any more than to the degree that destruction is required for creation. To minimize the responsibility I feel to answer to anything outside of myself and instead just sit and think is what I desire. I also feel as if the constant pressing in of some responsibility means I can't let myself loose. I'm not free to fully explore the simmering anxieties and desires inside of me because I am always gathering documents or studying or—and so on. But I want to, mentally, follow them to their ends, just to better know my possibilities.
note (24.06.2023)
Has been said many times before I am certain but there is something very fascinating about the blatantly staged nature of reality TV. Something something spectacle something something consumption... but to what end? The more our own lives become hyperreal, the more media becomes "real"?
note (22.06.2023)
I can't handle actual attachment towards me. Terrifying.
note (22.06.2023)
Now that classes are over, may try to do some rearranging etc. on this site. No promises though.
note (21.06.2023)
On a certain level, my "lack" of an internal monologue is probably ironic is comparison with my "talent" for languages. But I wouldn't be surprised if there's actually some relationship, as I may have less severely internalized the rules of English and therefore may find it easier to adapt to others.
note (18.06.2023)
I believe that to be a human is to be cut off from humanity.
note (14.06.2023)
I would like a reading chair. I think I shall buy myself one to put in the library should I succeed in switching to the program I want.
note (08.06.2023)
to be absolutely powerful is to be absolutely possessed by power
note (01.06.2023)
beauty must revolt.
note (30.05.2023)
NOTE TO SELF THINK M0RE ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PRE-WORLD AND ALSO SELF-REALIZATION THROUGH THE OTHER
note (13.05.2023)
RIP Jean Baudrillard you would have loved the consumerification of acceptable gender "non-conformity" by fast fashion clothing companies and their soulless "gender neutral" clothing lines
note (04.05.2023)
Phil Ochs' I'm Tired is everything tbh
note (29.04.2023)
my opinion on "human nature" as a construct separate from "animal nature" is that it's purely societal and not at all universal. our "inherent" nature is animal.
note (24.04.2023)
my opinion on psychiatrists is that they are haters because they do not have creative pussy energy!!!
note (23.04.2023)
realizing I seem to pretty regularly cycle between moods in a manner aligning with what we call bipolar. or rather I've been thinking about this for a while now but it seems to be a thought that lingers.
note (22.04.2023)
T shirt that says "BAD AT IDEAS" but the ideas it refers to are not just personal concepts but also particular ideas as in ideals, as in The Idea of a thing and my reticence in recognizing The Idea of an anything
note (20.04.2023)
I think the real trutrans test should be if you support transhumanism or not
note (20.04.2023)
I will not spend $350 on the signed used copy of Derrida's On Grammatology I will not spend $350 on the signed used copy of Derrida's On Grammatology I will not spend $350 on the signed used copy of Derrida's On Grammatology I will not spend $350 on the signed used copy of Derrida's On Grammatology I will not spend $350 on the signed used copy of Derrida's On Grammatology
LIFE AS ART. excerpt from an email to a friend (19.04.2023)
Lately I've been getting more and more into the idea that life should be like a work of art. Perhaps a bit insane—certainly the ravings of a transsexual!—but (allow me to phrase clumsily what I haven't phrased before) I think that everyone should be able to change themselves just as a story changes, that the important part of being is becoming (coming-into-being, we can say), the choice of who we are and what we do. We should be able to craft ourselves as a sculptor crafts a statue. We should pursue what is beautiful to us and become one with it! We should always be open to new, other forms of beauty, and therefore to new becomings! Why should we stagnate? This is I think why, as you've noticed, my site is more of a fluid "artistic presentation" of myself, and why I take a metaphorical approach to my philosophy, why I write about it more literarily than I need to. I remember also a quote of filmmaker David Cronenberg, when asked about the parallels between his film Crimes of the Future and the situation of trans people, who described transition as "an artist giving their all to their art". Perhaps to some (certainly to transmedicalists!) it may seem too much a romanticization of it, and I understand that by confessing this I run the risk of being the "transsexual narcissist" that is so feared, but this quote expressed a feeling that had long gone without words inside me! I do not transition because I am a man, or to fit into society, but because I want artistic control over my body and because I find my transsexual body to be more beautiful. (It is, perhaps, a more serious way of phrasing something which I once expressed to a curious coworker who seemed to think that I was perhaps MTF, and asked if I was "committed either way"—my response being that "my only commitment is to being hot").
An individualist idea, yes, but one that necessitates the contact and love of others. How can I create myself (bring myself out from the pre-world) without the tools (prostheses, to use that philosophical term) to do so? And where do I find that if not from others? And moreover, do we not discover so much beauty through others as well?
APPENDIX
remembering how the quote I used at the start of my novella for that one project was "Condemnation, why?/Because my duty was always to beauty/That was my crime" from Depeche Mode... man I've actually been on this for a while huh
note (18.04.2023)
It's funny though, I've noticed lately people (well mainly professors) who seem clearly cognizant of my avoidance being encouraging to me. Like my descriptive grammar professor once I went to her office hours to make up those quizzes was like "I like how you talk, you should talk more in class" but you know. In the way people tell you to talk more when they mean it in a "you say worthwhile things" way not in a "wtf silent freak" way. And now encourages me to talk when we are in class and to join groups when we do group exercises. Or me going to office hours today and my philosophy professor being like "yes you can sit and ask questions" in a similar way when I was there today. I am perceived. And seemingly kindly. Which is nice. But funny. I feel like a funny animal that people are trying to teach not to be scared :)
note (16.04.2023)
Finally got around to watching Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future. AMAZING FILM. Expresses in a way literal words cannot things I have been feeling for a long time regarding politicized biology, politics of the body, "humanism", and so on. Absolute masterpiece. A medical problem—a political problem. Yes!!! And Cronenberg's interview where he was asked about trans people and described this as "an artist giving their all to their art"—he is the inly one who gets it. Everyone else leave forever.
note (09.04.2023)
I don't believe in free will but I choose to live as if it's real anyways :)
ELABORATING ON THE PRE-WORLD (excerpt from an email to a friend) (07.04.2023)
I think what I sent to [kotte] made it a little bit more clear but yes, I do regard this Imposition with suspicion at best. To a certain degree it is unavoidable, I suppose, such as with the linguistic examples I gave earlier*. Which is why, I believe, it is important not to privilege one form over another. My approach is, I think, a bit phenomenological (another area I need to learn more about!), which is what I've been talking about with every definition being intrinsically a limitation (there is an "I" because there is a "not-I"). We need these definitions to express ourselves and not only make ourselves intelligible, but also to make the world intelligible to ourselves. Therefore the closest thing we can have to being without limits while also retaining intelligibility is a fluidity of form (the real imposition, perhaps, is not the teaching of one language but the interdiction of another).
I do find the discussion and also between you and [kotte] of the Imposition and the Pre-world intending to destroy each other a bit amusing because it is the part of my description I'm the least sure about, so I don't necessarily have any good answers... I'm still cooking!
Language in this sense is a prosthesis, yes! Because it allows us to express what we could not without it, but we had to create it/adopt it first.
A paintbrush vs a social media... neither is inherently expressive or impositive (idfk if that's a "real" world but fuck it we ball) but one has to consider the ways in which they are used. When we use a paintbrush to express an idea we hold within ourself, we are using it as a prosthesis. Social media can, in theory, be used to express oneself, and some perhaps do use it effectively to this end. But I think an important difference is the matter of possession. Social media is owned by capital holders, and is thus ultimately a prosthesis for capitalist imposition. Therefore the negative mental affect (short, brain-frying posts being used to hold one's attention and distract from one's own thoughts and problems all while running endless ads in front of one's eyes).
*what I wrote to [kotte]:
I'm so so sooooo sleepy but one thing I'm realizing I didn't make clear enough is that this pre-world is the pre-world of an individual (person or otherwise) and not of categories. I mean with that story example, I don't consider the me from that story a platonic ideal. But yes every me that could have been belongs to that pre-world and every death is destruction by imposition of a certain experience.
When I talk of ideas in a pre-world I talk of ones held by a person. Such as (or rather particularly) those that are untranslatable or inexpressible. An emotion which has not been put into words exists in the pre-world. Perhaps I describe my character as sad. I've expressed this emotion (through the linguistic concept of "sadness", which is closer to a platonic idea) in the text and brought it into reality now, but this word can never capture every nuance of the emotion. But this is also the only way to make it remotely comprehensible. This is the inescapable tension.
This is I think what fascinates me with languages and makes me want to learn as much "language" as I can in order to have as broad as possible a range of expression For example—if I knew only English I could not have written that poem in Polish, because English has only one "you". On the other hand there are other possibilities which grammatical number prevents the emergence of from the pre-world. There is, for example, the Japanese film Tetsuo, translated as "the Iron Man". What's interesting is that Japanese has no grammatical gender, and so really tetsuo could refer to a singular iron man or multiple iron men. This is relevant because there are two "iron men" within this film, and at the end they have joined into one united form, and the Japanese title Tetsuo is able to refer to a) each iron man individually, b) both of them as iron men at once, and c) the unified iron man, all at the same time, an ambiguity which is lost in languages with grammatical number, Polish (and of course English) among them. Therefore this (individual) concept faces more imposition in numbered languages.
note (05.04.2023)
problem: due to my more limited vocabulary and less experience I'm more honest in Polish and it's going to cause issues. IMAGINE YOU'RE A PROFESSOR AND SOME INSANE AMERICAN COMES TO OFFICE AND EXPLAINING WHY HE DOESN'T UNDERSTAND KANT, SAYS "how does moral law connect with freedom according to Kant? because obviously I'm not saying that we have the right to kill every person, but if we can't, I understand that as a neutralization of choice" I AM GOING TO GET MYSELF INSTITUTIONALIZED
MANIFESTING THE PRE-WORLD (excerpt from an email to a friend) (05.04.2023)
- I don't think there is necessarily one pre-world, it can be applied to any form/concept/whatever. For example, I believe that each individual person has their own pre-world, but there's also the pre-world to works of art.
- WHAT I MEAN BY THIS IS I never actually know what anything I make is going to be until I finish it and I'm bringing it into form but really there are many different forms it could have taken. My approach to art is rather to allow it to reveal itself to me so that I can allow it to express itself to the world. A work whose form is defined by IMPOSITION may, for example, fall into the category you've often spoken of, of art ruined for capitalist bullshit.
- and yes, as I've said, I don't cleanly delineate between philosophy and art, so I even consider this idea I'm working on right now to be something I'm attempting to make "reveal" itself to me!
- I realize I mapped this out like I was having a mild stroke so for clarity the bit that says "experience" is tied to the arrow to "understanding" in the pre-world
- Regarding experience what I mean is that in interacting with the world we discover what we find beautiful etc., we use this to understand ourselves (in terms of taste!) and the world we interact with.
- The Imposition is what inhibits expression of what comes from the pre-world. Mentioning once again language, an interdict on language would be an example of this.
- I'm not actually sure if I think it's in a struggle to destroy the pre-world and vice-versa or not? But I'm inclined to say yes. What I mean to say is to me it's like there is a battle over who has control over the forms existing in the world. Explaining this through the example of human nature: heterosexualism is an imposition of sexual norms which seeks to control sexual/behavioral forms and often operates on the concept that the norms are part of human nature. One who wishes to live not in accordance with these norms is then necessarily in opposition to heterosexualism.
- Actually, thinking about it further, I think they do seek to destroy each other, but the forms they take are the agents of this and so I should have diagrammed that instead of drawing a direct opposition. (Yes, we can speak of capitalism the idea, but it exists and exerts its force against us through capitalist structures!)
- What I mean by the problem of civilization and those two bullet points underneath (not actually particularly organized) is something that came up in philosophy lectures—"civilization" in English and French tends to embrace cultural concepts, while in German and I think in Polish it is actually used more to mean technological achievements.
- Prosthesis is an idea I was put onto by my philosophy professor actually, which I'm still learning on but one thing to note is the Derrida essay I've been yammering about has The Prosthesis of Origin as its subtitle, and while he actually doesn't go much into what he means by prostheses, from what I understand is that when invoked in terms of language, it's really important to remember the not mine part of his idea here (the prosthesis is by something not inherent to the "natural" human form) and also that it allows for expression of the self (it is a prosthesis which enhances our communication with the world). Essentially I think technology/art/[anything created] as an expression of the pre-world functions as a kind of prosthesis which better allows it to manifest itself, whereas technology, etc. as an expression of the imposition does the opposite—consider social media and the negative effects it has had on us!
These are some real fucking runes but your prompting was good for me, it encouraged me to figure a bit more what I'm talking about here and come to this concept of the imposition! Please let me know what you think about it! Also if it is insensible because I did my best to explain but ummmmmm. You know! OH one final thing which is a bit of a tangent.
- The note to myself about a "graveyard" is really yeah mainly a note to myself about something I need to think about more, especially connected with zmartwychstawanie; it's from the novella I wrote for a program at my prev uni told entirely through dreams where a central location is a graveyard, where among other things the protagonist discovers the countless corpses of forms of himself that could have been, ones both kinder and crueler (one of these almost haunts him like a particularly angry ghost), had his life been different. At the time it focused mainly on imposed experiences (childhood) but one thing I want to think about more is how the choices we make also mean choosing which version of ourselves gets to live and which versions must die.
note (04.04.2023)
Kant was a silly little man and deontology is a silly little plan. That said note to self look into his ideas on beauty.
EXCERPT FROM AN EMAIL TO A FRIEND. Language as giver of form, definition, limitation. (03.04.2023)
predictably through my lens of philosophy of language—I am reminded of the Wittgenstein quote which every linguistics professor includes in their first lecture of a series: "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world", though of course there is a certain inextricability of definition and limitation, hence the Wilde quote: "to define is to limit". I find that it is equally true that to limit is to define. I don't recall if I've talked with you about this before, but it's very much tied up into my conceptualization of a mental pre-world that exists before language in many potentialities but with no form; it is with language that we give form to (define) our thoughts, but also through this we limit them. But I risk a long tangent, so I digress and save my thoughts elsewhere! Returning to what you said, when we limit/define our world according to the limits/definitions of certain concepts, we do treat these concepts as real!
THERE IS NO MONOLOGUE (03.04.2023)
I last night read Derrida's Monolingualism of the Other and it has made me think. I have to say that I think no thing such as a monologue exists, especially not an internal monologue. Of course someone can speak to oneself and be the only one speaking, but this does not mean that one is not in dialogue with some Other. First of all because there is no language without an other, there is no "I" without some not-I. Language is not born within us but developed through observation of and in conversation with this not-I. The very way one speaks is therefore permeated with the presence of this not-I. It never fully belongs to us, or else there would never be those "inexpressible feelings" of which even those with constant internal monologues complain. Those who can memorize the content of a book word-for-word are exceptions by which we can understand that memory itself exists outside of language, in some kind of pre-world which is not self-conscious. It is only wordless thought which truly belongs to the self. Any speech, even spoken to oneself and only inside one's own head, requires a stepping beyond oneself into what is communicable, when of course one's internal world does not "communicate" in such a manner. Communicability necessarily implies an other to whom one must explain oneself. Internal monologue is nothing more than an internalizing of the Other, enabing a forgetting of them so thorough that one explains oneself as if naturally, as if one could ever explain oneself without an Other who requires an explanation. I think there may be traces of Hegel's dialectic here as well, in terms of "self-recognition through the other". It is an internal self-recognition, which requires an internalization of the Other.
APPENDIX: something I wrote to a friend about Monolingualism of the Other
From what I understand what Derrida meant with "I have only one language" is largely that it is impossible to define what a language is, especially as we cannot define any the languae (e.g. how can we say that there is a the English when there are many different versions of it, when you are speaking British English (and there are different British Englishes!) and I am speaking American English (and there are different American Englishes!)), particularly when language is never constant. There is no clear definition for when something becomes a different language vs. when something becomes a dialect (linguists generally just go with whether the speakers of a language/dialect define it as so!). But there is a constant thing in every use of language, which is its otherness (as it is adopted socially, and he focuses on the way it expresses "I" as a concept, meaning that this "I" is articulated through the language and therefore other from it, because without otherness there would be no "I"). Therefore "I have only one language, and it is not mine" = any specific language cannot be defined; the defining aspect of language in general is that it is an expression (Derrida uses the word "promise") of the self, and therefore something separate from the self. As far as I understood it!